“No,” said Sander. If they did, he sure as hell for the wicked would have heard of it before. The thought of such a thing made his teeth hurt, he couldn’t say why. “What’s the candle for, spells and evil rites and all?”
Gilles shrugged, slipping his pale hand back into the glove. “Different things. You light the candle in the house, and all of the… not-sleepers, those people in the house will go to sleep. Or you hold the candle, and people will not see you, even if you stand before them. Different… stories, yes, different stories, but the same is hanged man’s hand for candle, candle for sneaking inside and outside of the house. Good for the thief, maybe. Hence, even a dead man’s hand has more solid use than the all of a living coward.”
“Witchcraft is not, nor shall it ever be, more useful than a God-fearing man, coward or not,” said Simon, making the sign of the cross. He seemed to have swung back around to being disgusted by Gilles. Probably from the realization that he’d just spent some time insulting the politics of his only wealthy friends in the service of buttering up a foreigner whom he’d probably never see again.
“Maybe,” said Gilles. “Dead man’s hand being better than the whole of a coward is only a… saying? Something that is said?”
“I think you have said quite enough. Monsieur.” Simon spit the last word like a grapeseed. “Unless—”
“Simon,” Jo said in exasperation. “You’ve already annoyed half the table, and insulting the baron won’t take back all the nasty things you’ve said, so just—”
“Unless you care to have those blasphemous lips shut for you,” Simon concluded, crossing his arms across his chest.
“Blasphemous?” The Frenchman seemed more bemused than insulted by Simon’s challenge, thank all the saints who listen. “What is blasphemous? Do you not tell tales here in Holland? Did you not disparage the Countess Jacoba for punishing those who merely speak their minds?”
“Speak their minds?! Why, I—”
“Simon,” Sander said, having had more than enough of the punk’s flip-flopping for one night. “Shut it. Have a word outside with me, Guy.”
“Gilles,” said he, raising an eyebrow. “But of course, Graaf.”
“Jan,” said Sander, leading the Frenchman to the door of the tavern. The name burned acrid as ever on the tongue, but you got used to it, like wine. The White Horse was right full, but it was cold enough that there wasn’t a lot of overflow on the street—people who couldn’t cram inside simply went somewhere else. Out on Kuipershaven there wasn’t much wind, but it was still snowing. Sander tried to get excited about what was coming next, but simply felt cold.
“What is it, Jan?” asked Gilles, snowflakes falling onto the frozen wave of his hair and sticking there like freshly ground salt caught in the crust of a pudding.
“It’s like this, you frilly fucking ponce,” said Sander, the words suddenly warming him in a way no fire had down the many long winter nights in the Tieselen house, reviving his strength like no tea nor philter ever could. Gilles was staring at him, his eyes dark as his hair, dark as all the hidden devils of the world, and Sander went on, happier than he could remember feeling. “I’m going to take you into an alley and you’re going to suck me to the root. Or, and you have a choice here, or I’m going to beat the ever-loving shit out of you, and then you’re going to suck me to the root. Your choice, you French pansy, your choice.”
Gilles’s lips pulled back so slowly it was goddamn sinister. Sander half-expected them to just keep receding forever, all the way to the man’s ears, revealing… he didn’t know what. Eel’s teeth, maybe, or a dog’s. Finally, the Frenchman said, “Where is this alley, Graaf?”
“Good answer,” said Sander, feeling his heat rise instead of diminish at this unexpected but very welcome response. Come to it, he wouldn’t have exactly been at his best in a scrap, getting over a fever and—
—Gilles came at him like Sander didn’t have time to think of what, something fucking fast and mean, and then both men were on the ground. The cobbles were frosted, and cracked Sander’s skull something fierce, even though he’d angled his neck during the fall to prevent just that. Gilles’s fists were pummeling Sander’s innocent guts into porridge, left and right, left and right. He was just fortunate the man hadn’t been of a mind to stick him with a dagger or he’d already be dead, or close enough.
But what if Gilles did have a knife, what if Sander’s belly was just too stupid to feel it? That moment of terror was what truly brought Sander back to life, the old Sander, the true Sander. He could feel the Frenchman’s muscular thigh grinding between his legs, through his ornamental codpouch, could see Gilles’s snarling face above him, sheer delight painted across the knight’s face. Nice, thought Sander, very nice, and cock and man shot upright in the same burst of excitement.
Sander would have bit Gilles’s face if he hadn’t have been so pretty, but in his time as graaf he’d come to appreciate beautiful things for more than the pleasure their destruction brought. So, instead, he bit the bastard’s shoulder, gagging on velvet cape as he wrenched a hand loose from under the Frenchy and punched the fucker in the throat. They were rolling then, over and over, the frozen street clobbering one side and fists clobbering the other, and Sander laughed a mad, desperate laugh as Gilles hissed a stream of furious French at him. They sounded good, those incomprehensible words coming out of Gilles’s bloody mouth, and Sander kept trying to kiss his opponent. This only incensed the man more, which in turn only got Sander to burn the hotter.
Best night he’d had in ages, and it was only getting better—ten pfennigs said he sweet-talked the Frenchy into going home with him, once the brawl was resolved. Good night, indeed.
Januari 1426
“Holding an Eel by the Tail”
I.
Christmas and the Festival of Fools took too long in coming and then quickly fled, and since Zoete had quit the city to stay with Wurfbain somewhere abroad, Jolanda was not invited to a single feast that season. She was accustomed to being snubbed by the local nobles, of course; even Lady Meyl Von Wasser, who had seemed so friendly when they’d met at the Easter service in Leyden, expertly avoided eye contact during worship at Dordrecht’s Saint Nicolaas Church. Hooks weren’t welcome in the noble houses of the Cod-ruled city, Jolanda got that, but she had hoped for a pity-invitation over Yuletide, even if it came from a guildsman’s wife or a merchant’s widow instead of a proper lady.
She wished she possessed Lijsbet’s easygoing demeanor that earned the maid friends wherever she went regardless of circumstance, but since she didn’t, she was glad she possessed Lijsbet herself—they went to the baths twice a week and skating nearly every morning and spent the afternoons telling stories and playing cards and flirting with lads at the cider and chestnut stalls set up in Grote Markt Square. Just the once, Jolanda gave Lijsbet a sword lesson in the courtyard, but aye, just the once—Lijsbet was a comically bad pupil.
Then war came and ruined everything, as Jolanda supposed wars were prone to do. The local Cod wives Jolanda occasionally encountered at the markets were snootier than ever before to her, and Wurfbain came to visit more frequently than usual, updating Sander and Jolanda on political gossip. He also lectured them ad nauseam on the importance of avoiding any public conflict with even the lowliest Cod in Dordrecht, for the hated rivals were seeking excuses to ruin the Tieselens and any other Hooks they could finger. The count knew far more than he let on, as usual, but Jolanda gathered that Countess Jacoba had indeed wooed a powerful Englishman to her cause and that all of Britain was poised to crash down upon Holland, restoring the countess to her rightful place. When that happened, the whole world would turn upside down, and the Tieselens, as well as Wurfbain, Lady Zoete, and any other secret Hooks, would be the ones on top.
One afternoon in mid-January, they received word from a footman that Wurfbain had again returned to Dordrecht, and while Lijsbet combed Jolanda’s hair in her bedchambers, the women speculated on what news he might share at supper.
> “I have a pfennig that says nothing’s changed from last time,” said Lijsbet, working the boxwood comb with a practiced arm. In the time since she had become a lady, Jolanda’s hair had grown well past her shoulders. It looked much better than she had expected it would, falling around her face in a surprisingly handsome fashion, as even Sander had remarked. Yet she still sometimes longed to cut it all off, to not have Lijsbet run her brutal comb through it ever again, as she did now while doing a passable Wurfbain: “I bring the exciting news that Jacoba is still in London mustering her forces. Now, please pass your best wine over here, and some of that lamprey, too.”
“Wurfbain’s not Simon,” said Jolanda, and then in unison, they both added, “unfortunately!”
Ever since the night when Sander had dueled that disquieting French baron in the street and then, to Jolanda’s mortification, accompanied the Frenchman back to his lodgings, a transformation had come over Simon. He was every bit as flirtatious and painfully obvious as ever, but a certain seriousness had replaced his formerly chronic frivolity. He had also taken to church in a way he never had before, and seemed actively concerned with the state of the poor children of Dordt—what charity the orphans of the flood had received immediately after the catastrophe was long since used up, and while most people seemed content to pretend the young beggars didn’t exist, Simon was constantly talking of the need to protect the wretches from the ravages of weather, starvation, and the obvious perils of living on the street. Considering how rough affairs were for nobles left landless and destitute by the flood, he would point out, imagine the state of their serfs, especially the young ones who had survived flood and famine only to be left adrift on the cruel streets of Dordrecht.
Mind, he was still a mooch and a cad, forever emerging from the crowd to join Jolanda and Lijsbet just after they’d purchased mulled cider or candied almonds from a stall, rather than before they’d laid down their coin, but there was something almost charming about this flagrant behavior. Combine his looks with Wurfbain’s politics and fortunes and you’d have the perfect suitor, Lijsbet has said more than once, but then the maid took her Hookishness much more seriously than Jolanda.
If only Simon didn’t have such an obvious motivation for being sweet to her, Jolanda might have let herself indulge in daydreams of his genuinely having changed, having become a more serious sort of fellow—as it stood, she was wise enough to recognize that he was simply changing his wooing tactics. Probably. It also would have made things easier if he would stop following her from afar, as he sometimes did—he no doubt thought it was gallant, minding her from the shadows to make sure nobody gave her trouble, but instead it was downright unsettling, forever feeling eyes following you from an alley, constantly catching glimpses of a hooded figure ducking around corners when you checked over your shoulder. If she hadn’t confirmed it was him by once dodging into an alley and then lying in wait until he came rushing along after, it would have been truly disturbing, having a watcher always at your back… but aye, it was just Simon.
“I tell you,” said Lijsbet, “we ought to find a way to get Simon down here for supper. Nothing’s better than watching him and the count squirm at each other’s company.”
“Anything’s better than Wurfbain’s sermons to us novices,” said Jolanda. “Been left out of every feast and court dealing since we arrived on account of our politics, but he still talks down to us, like we might turn on the countess if he wasn’t here to remind us not to.”
“Dull as it is to hear it over and over, m’lady, I’m glad you’ve got a friend like the count—I’ve served in a few houses, as you know, and it’s saddening to know how many otherwise witty lords and ladies are swayed into folly by the counsel of Cods.”
“Be that as it may, I can understand their outrage about Jacoba’s double-marriage business,” said Jolanda, bored enough that baiting her maid seemed like a worthy diversion. “It would be bad enough, marrying an Englishman, but when you’ve already got one husband here—that’s an awful way to go about winning local support.”
“That Brabançon she married before was jelly-boned as a pickled herring,” said Lijsbet. “He’d been a good husband and protected her claim, she wouldn’t have needed a new fellow—believe you me, m’lady, I know what it’s like to have a husband abandon you to your own wits, and it changes a girl’s outlook. Besides, it’s not no double-marriage, or it shouldn’t be; whatever that Cod-bought pope says now, he promised her a divorce ages ago!”
“Oh my,” said Jolanda in mock surprise. “Besmirching the holiest man in the world as well as praising the villainous countess—you’re on quite a tear today, aren’t you?”
“Yes, yes, she’s so villainous, asking what’s owed to her by birth. She was cheated, as everyone knows, cheated and run off like a stray dog by your so-called local support. Only thing the countess did wrong was put her trust in courts and church, in her friends. Can you imagine what she must be going through? To be born to greatness, only to have some, some fraud come in and take everything? She’s right to be mad, and right to rally any army she can, even if they are a pack of Englanders.” Lijsbet had stopped combing in her passion.
“Really, Lijsbet,” said Jolanda, trying to enjoy the ire she’d raised in her maid, but rather put off by some of the character of the girl’s speech. “You ought to be careful about who you say that to—most of your sheephead friends at market wouldn’t take kindly to your advocating for foreign armies fording the Maas!”
“So they say, but they’re eager enough to tongue the ass of a Burgundian like Duke Philip! I’ll take a woman of this land, born and bred, with foreign support, to a foreign man forcing his way into ruling us with the support of greedy locals.”
“But Philip never would have been able to if her uncle hadn’t chosen him,” said Jolanda, remembering the last supper where all this had been discussed at length between Wurfbain and Laurent while Sander dozed in his chair at the head of the table. “Old Count John’s grave is barely cold and already you’re lamenting Philip’s succeeding, when all he’s done is—”
“John was Bavarian,” said Lijsbet hotly, “meaning he had just as little claim to us as Philip. None, I mean, none at all.”
“Bavarian or not, he was Jacoba’s flesh and blood,” said Jolanda. “A good ruler is a good ruler, no matter where he is born.”
“Ha! How good was he, to steal his niece’s crown and end up murdered by his own knight? John the Pitiless, they called him, and that sounds right to me, as I don’t pity his passing. Problem with those foreigners is they’re like rats, you can’t just kill one, you need to burn the whole nest. Kill a Bavarian, and a Burgundian grows in his place. If the flood hadn’t come, they never would have got away with it, mark me, it’s all these corrupt merchants with their blood-dripping riches coming in from dirty foreign deals, all this, this, jamming a lever under the world and wrenching it out of joint, until—”
“Lijsbet,” Jolanda said, now every bit as enflamed as her maid and turning in her chair to face the haughty servant. “I will remind you that the house you serve, a house that has supported Countess Jacoba unfailingly ever since my father and I came here, this house, stands, as a matter of fact, on the fortune brought in through the importation of foreign goods. Or were you unaware that the Tieselen farmlands are now, as they have been for some time, under fucking water, and that our breeding has much less to do with our situation than the foresight of the old graaf in transitioning himself into mercantile interests?”
For a moment Lijsbet defiantly stared down at her mistress, and then, abruptly, both women burst out laughing. They sounded like a couple of cranks at the White Horse, coming to blows over the affairs of people they’d never met nor seen, over events that had less to do with their lives than a sudden storm when they were swimming or a run of luck at the Karnöffel table. Lijsbet sobered first, and knelt down in front of Jolanda’s chair. She suddenly looked on the verge of tears, and Jolanda wondered just what in the name of the nine va
liants had gotten into her maid today.
“I’m sorry, Lady, truly I am. You’re right that I forget my place, but I hope you know me well enough to see that it’s not through pride or scorn, but just my silliness—I love you like a sister, though I know it’s presumptuous to say it like that, but I do, and sometimes I just… well, act stupid as I would around a sister, instead of minding myself better, the way I ought to around someone of your station. I promise, promise, that I’ll never say such foolish things again, nor take such a tone. I—”
“Oh, shut it,” said Jolanda, pushing back her maid’s veil to tousle her auburn hair. “I’ve never had a sister, and until meeting you I never wanted for one. Now I know better. I’m lucky to have someone who will tell me what they think when I ask, instead of what they believe I do. Now, turn ’round so I can do yours, it’s tangled as I’ve ever seen.”
Lijsbet obliged, pulling her wimple the rest of the way off and shaking her hair out. “You’ve spoilt me, m’lady—I never dreamt I’d work for good, righteous people in this den of Cods, and I get so carried away, I offend even those I love, those who’re doing more to help the countess than a wretch like me ever could. Say you’ll forgive me, Lady? Please?”
“Already done,” said Jolanda, and meant it. Removing the comb from where it was lodged painfully in her own hair, she set to working it through her maid’s. “I provoked you, Lijsbet, and cruelly—I meant to tease you, knowing your passion for the countess. I’d be a fool not to know by now that you have some love for the woman exceeding even what the graaf and I possess for her.”
“Well, it’s in my bones—my mother came from Hainaut, and my da’s brother Bertie died at Gorinchem, trying to win the day for her. Now that things are getting hot again, I truly wish she triumphs, drives those Burgundy bastards back to where they came from. Even if she did marry an Englishman. She reminds me of Griet,” said Lijsbet wistfully, resting an elbow on Jolanda’s blanket-draped knee. “Just like you do. Women who won’t stand for nonsense.”
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